Pressure
by shanacus
Summary: Thalia&Luke/ "Because Luke, maybe I didn't want you to get hurt. Which was obviously a far more likely possibility." Thalia tends to an injured Luke.


_**Pressure **_

The setting sun's orange light whisked over the forest, while a disgruntled Thalia half-dragged, and half-carried a bleeding Luke over to a smooth enough patch of dirt.

"Ouch, ouch Thalia stop it hurts." He moaned.

"Maybe next time when I say _I got this, _you _won't _go charging for the monster, regardless."

Monsters, monsters, _monsters, _it's all it ever was all the time. And as Luke warm blood oozed from the wound on his arm she detested them more and more every second. She knew she could fix it if she could just lie him down, apply some pressure, and patch him up. She was becoming so used to dealing with injuries.

Finally Thalia set Luke down on the dirt and tried to get a good look at his injury. Too bad it was covered it blood.

"Annabeth!" Thalia barked in panic. "Go get the first aid kit, now!"

Little Annabeth scurried for the tent, ripping through their things, searching desperately for the first aid kit. Thalia knew Annabeth was scared out of her wits. And although Thalia knew the damage couldn't possibly be that bad, and that they went through this countless times, she couldn't help but be scared out her wits too.

"Can you sit up Luke?" Thalia asked tentatively.

After all, he had gotten so woozy from the loss of blood she had resorted to dragging him to their camp. And that was only minutes ago. Why hadn't he _listened _to her?

Finally, Thalia got her hands on the medical supplies. Noticing the dimming of the sky, she told Annabeth to start a fire.

This left Thalia alone to tend to Luke. He had sat up and she was cleaning the bite with a cloth and alcohol. Luke winced but did not cry out. He knew that she was simply infuriated with him and any sudden sounds he would have a bigger problem to worry about. After the cut was clean, she was relieved to see it wasn't nearly as bad as she had feared. Not too deep, and although blood continued to trickle out, she knew it would soon stop if she applied pressure. She took a cloth and began pressing Luke's arm.

Seeing hope for his arm, Luke looked up at Thalia and smiled at her.

"Good job Nurse Thalia."

"Don't try to joke around with me, I'm mad at you."

"Aw come on Thalia, didn't almost losing me make you appreciate me more or something?"

"_I _don't appreciate people who stupidly get themselves hurt when someone else was _taking care of it. _"

"I only did it cause I didn't want _you _to get hurt."

Thalia all of a sudden became very aware that Annabeth had started the fire and had long since headed to sleep after their exhausting day. She and Luke were completely alone. She also became very aware of the way Luke was looking at her and how close their faces were.

"Well that was very dumb of you," she said, matter-of-factly, as she concentrated on the bite and applied a bit more pressure than necessary. "You know I'm the better fighter."

Luke rolled his eyes.

"Okay so you've beaten me a couple of time,"

"_Every_ time."

"Well why are you so mad anyway? This can't possibly be an ego thing considering I did, in fact, fail judging by the ginormous bite on my arm."

Thalia was quiet for a second and stared down at the cloth that was still being pressed to Luke's arm. Finally she couldn't avoid Luke's gaze any longer and looked up.

"_Because _Luke, maybe _I _didn't want _you _to get hurt. Which was obviously a far more likely possibility."

There, she'd said it. And just as she predicted Luke broke into a huge, and very smug, grin.

"Aw Thalia did you just admit you care about me?"

"Shut up. You know I only want to keep you around because I need another fighter, however less talented he is,"

She wanted to move on from this topic. Of course she cared about him, he was her best friend, but that didn't mean they needed to _talk _about it.

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Luke said, suddenly springing up. "Since you don't care about me at all I guess it's okay if I just run around and bleed to death." He teased while clutching his arm mockingly.

"Luke! Shut up that isn't funny come back before you faint and I have to go get you!"

But Luke ran with surprising speed for someone who was too weak to walk only an hour ago.

He just laughed at her while she frantically chased him with the cloth.

"Luke come on stop, this isn't funny!"

When he did, it was so abrupt Thalia nearly lunged the cloth back onto his wound. Thalia found herself face to face with Luke, their faces much closer than friends' faces should be.

"Told you, you cared." He breathed, before leaning in and kissing her.

It was their first kiss and instantly Thalia felt her whole body electrify. Far more than any daughter of Zeus had ever felt before. When they finally did pull away (both very reluctantly) Thalia tried to turn her attention back to the bite. But it had stopped bleeding.

"How long hasn't it been bleeding?" she asked.

"Hmm I'd say about around the time you started insulting my sword fighting abilities."

Thalia immediately began hitting him, punctuating a word with every blow.

"YOU-FREAKING-ASS."

But Luke simply ignored her anger and laughed. He grabbed her arms and moved his face dangerously close to hers.

"You really need to stop giving me heart attacks because you like to do stupid things." She told him.

"I'm sorry; I'll try to be less stupid."

"We're not done you know, I still need to bandage you."

"Oh calm down Nurse Thalia your patient has some other needs for you to attend to."

"You are such a loser," she whispered before he kissed her again.

_Kiss number two. _

* * *

**So that was my second Luke/Thalia oneshot. I have no idea how I can like a couple so much when they were barely seen together in the book. Anyway, all I can say is that I hope this doesn't suck...I had fun writing it but I'm just not so sure its very IC. It's hard cause the only time we really saw Luke and Thalia they had some pretty effed up things going on so...I don't know its hard to see them all normal exactly. So I hope you liked it! Review and favorite ! **


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